Author’s Note: The following is Chapter 60 of the my online book "Excited Delirium". Please post comments. Please tell your friends about this story. If you’ve missed a chapter, please click here for Chapter 1 (Prelude) or here for the full index

August 7, 2008

Eddie flew from the OMNINet building as quickly as he could, knowing that it was just a matter of time before someone realized what he had done. He thought for a moment about the welfare of Forest Samson, but the thought lasted about as long as an urbanite waits when a light turns green. Despite his rush, he didn’t want to look too far out of sorts, because it was still early afternoon. Most people don’t rush out of the OMNINet buildings until late in the day. Very late.

He turned towards the hotel where Kite was staying and where he had told him to go to when he was finished his ‘mission’.

Strangely, he would have never known this before now, but the last 20 minutes were probably the most insane and invigorating minutes of his life, as sad as that might sound. He now understood one of the reasons why Kite did what he did.

At the door, he was greeted by Chaos, a hulk of a monster who looked like he was a poster child for whey powder and Bowflex. He didn’t know whether he should run or shrivel.

“I’m Chaos not some small time thug of a guardian,” Chaos said stoically.

“Whatever … man … just if you don’t mind, can I come in?” Eddie asked impatiently.

Kite came into the hallway behind Chaos and pulled Eddie inside.

“What’s the scoop?” he asked excitedly. “Did you do everything as we planned?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, panting. He wasn’t used to running from one Manhattan building to another.

“Great … what’d you find out?”

“I went through all of the docs and it looks like Beijing is going to be their target.”

Everyone in the room paused and looked at Eddie like he had told each of them that their mother had just been raped and stabbed to death in the alley beside the hotel while they say here playing video games and eating chips.

“It’s a sure hit. Look at this,” he said as he pulled the first document from his briefcase.

“These guys are fucked,” Hummus exclaimed. “They’re going to kill everyone within a 200-mile radius doing that kind of work with that kind of population nearby.”

“I know!” Eddie answered impatiently.

“But when is it going to happen?” Kite asked, equally annoyed with not knowing all the details.

“I don’t know, but I got a whack of files from Garamond’s folder that should help,” Eddie offered.

“Are you NUTS?” Kite yelled. They’ve probably got layer on layer of protection on those files. The second you even rolled over them, they probably sent alarm bells to the security team!”

“They did. And a friend of Sasha’s called me to help me get even further than your crap notes could have got me,” Eddie answered calmly and snidely. “I think he was hitting on me because he kept asking if I was going to go to Sasha’s wake tomorrow morning.”

“All right!” Hummus cheered. “The Man’s gonna get a date and he’s helping out the team!” Hummus leaned over the clasp Eddie’s hand and congratulate him.

“Jeez … you’re worse than Kite here. Why is it that no one can take a joke?” Hummus asked, holding his hands up in the ‘What, me worry’ pose of Alfred E. Newman.

“I agree with Eddie. Let’s take a look at what he’s got,” Kite asked the team as he returned to the living room of the hotel suite.

They all took a page or two from the files that Eddie had printed and Kite looked at the work in awe.

“You really did get some help. Not too many people know that it’s really easy to bypass passwords simply by opening them in Notepad. That Forest dude really wants to jump your bone,” he teased.

“Would you guys FUCK OFF about Forest. I’m going tomorrow and I’m going to get some, but I don’t want to hear any more about it, OK?”

“Cool man. It’s just good to see you ‘back out’ again, like the gold ol’ days,” Kite said, expecting another rise.

Eddie hurled a pillow at him as a mild threat of what would follow if he kept things up.

“Uh, Eddie,” Chaos said as he read the files.

“DO NOT make another joke about Forest or I will even take you on you big … mountain,” Eddie said, the irritation think in his voice.

“Chill brother. I was just going to say that there’s not much to go on with these files. What you printed looks like a bunch of jibberish.”

“What are you talking about?” Eddie instantly grew pale, realizing that he had left the office too soon. There’s no way he’d be able to go back after what he’d done with Garamond’s files. He felt desperate and grabbed the page that Chaos was holding.

“Oh my god,” he said slowly.

Written on the page was an outline of a plan, but it didn’t give a date. He grabbed the other two pages and realized that they had the same information on them:

FILE NAME 2THES28-1

Day 1: Initiate

Day 2: Inflame

Day 3: Aftershocks

Day 4: Broadcasts

Day 5: Demand Access

Day 6: Access Limited

Day 7: International Outrage

Day 8: A new beginning.

“Arrrrrggh,” Kite groaned, pulling at the pillow that Eddie had just hurled at him. “What did you do?”

“Look man,” Eddie pleaded, panicking. “I did everything you told me to do. I can’t help that Garamond’s a freak.”

“Wait a second. You’re right. Garamond is a freak. There’s a clue here and we just have to figure it out,” Kite said, the light of optimism going off. “There’s three files, all with the same information. What does that mean?”

Eddie jumped in immediately: “the Holy Trinity. It has to be. It has to be symbolic. Garamond’s totally into that shit.”

“Guys,” Kite said as he looked at Hummus and Chaos, who were both still poring over the pages of the files that Eddie had printed. “Get online and start doing some searches. We need to find out what 2THES28 means.”

“No problem boss, they answered,” as they popped open their laptop covers, looking like they were both about to perform surgery.

Eddie had a look on his face and Kite watched him closely, a little worried about how stressed his friend looked. Eddie walked casually over to the nightstand by the side of the bed and pulled out the Gideon’s Bible. He flipped through the onion-skin pages and jumped close to the end. Kite thought he was looking for something in Revelations, but he stopped short and slapped the book down on the coffee table, his finger pointing to a specific verse. It was from the Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians and his finger pointed below the second verse, 8th paragraph:

THEN that lawless one will be revealed who the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His coming …

“Do you think this guy might be into numbers at all?” Hummus asked as he peered above his laptop at the other three in the room.

“Definitely. He once said that numerology was the only science that could be believed in,” Eddie said.

“Then you guys had better take a look at this. If you take the 2 each time from each file and multiply it, you get 8. If you take the 8 from the verse and put them all together, you get 888.”

“But what the fuck does that mean?” Kite asked belligerently, impatient with all the codes and mysteries surrounding this problem.

“August 8, 2008 is the first day of the Olympics in Beijing. It’s also exceptionally important with religious numerologists, both in China and within some Christian circles. And it’s tomorrow.”

They looked at each other with an exhausted sense of failure. They had come so close and now they were about to witness Garamond’s plan come to fruition.

(Note: "Excited Delirium" is a work of fiction. Any person, place or thing depicted in this work of fiction is also a work of fiction. Any relation of these subjects or characters to real locations, people or things are an unintentional coincidence.)